A NSW Supreme Court jury has been left to prepare to deliberate on whether Natasha Beth Darcy murdered her partner wealthy grazier partner Matthew Dunbar in the Northern Tablelands.
The prosecutor Brett Hatfield has suggested Darcy started looking for ways to murder Dunbar by poison in February 2017, citing searches on her iPhone and on a computer.
But in her closing address, Darcy’s barrister, Janet Manuell SC, asked if that was the only reasonable inference to be made from the searches on redback spiders and mushrooms.
She also questioned whether other people in the household could have made the searches.
Darcy had only been living at the property for a few months in February 2017.
“Were there lots of redback spiders around the property?” Manuell asked. “Were there spiders in the house, the usual creepy crawlies?”
02:08 EDT, 1 June 2021
Google searches about redback spiders may have related to creepy crawlies in the house rather than a potential poisoning method, a NSW woman s murder trial has been told.
And searches relating to mushrooms could have related to checking on edible fungi around the rural property, Natasha Beth Darcy s barrister told the Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.
The 46-year-old has denied sedating and gassing her sheep farmer partner Mathew Dunbar, who was found dead on his Pandora property in the Northern Tablelands town of Walcha on August 2, 2017.
Natasha Beth Darcy, 46, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mathew Dunbar after the 42-year-old sheep farmer was found dead in his home near Walcha, northern New South Wales, on August 2, 2017
Mathew Dunbar’s psychiatrist told a court the Walcha farmer did have depression, but it was caused by Ms Darcy, who would make “cruel comments” and even goaded him to kill himself.